Written by David Blackmon at Forbes

As the first month of 2018 comes to a close, the situation for the U.S. oil and gas industry remains highly positive. Several current news stories help to paint this rosy picture.

First, the U.S. rig count remains remarkably stable.

Wait, didn’t we just see headlines that the Baker Hughes weekly rig count jumped by 11 last week? Well, yeah, but that came after a pretty flat month overall. And when you look at the current DrillingInfo daily rig count, you see that measure of drilling activity in the U.S. is essentially flat since mid-December.